Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/29

Rh

 merely a piece of dirty cloth. The older persons were dressed in rags. In all the years I have known Mexico City I had never before seen such a sight.

"While in the city I met a Mexican gentleman who owned a large hacienda in the state of Guanajuato. He told me that in order to provide some employment for the people on his estate to keep them from starving he decided to have an improvement made which would keep a couple of hundred men, which was all the unemployed there were on the place, busy for some time. The news spread quickly that work was to be had on the hacienda, which was promptly stormed by an army of idle and hungry men. Not fewer than seven thousand men applied for work on a job that was only meant as a makeshift to provide bread for two hundred. Some of these applicants were so reduced by privation and want that they died on the ranch, having used their last remaining strength to reach what they hoped was a chance to work."

It should be borne in mind that these wretched creatures represent the "people" of Mexico; the peon population whose support the Carranza leaders sought and secured by promises to make conditions of life easier for them than they ever had been under former governments. Some time ago newspapers in Mexico City announced that a small revolution had been started by the farmers in the State of. Michoacan because the commanders of Carranza troops had